


Tapping Out

by WrithingBeneathYou



Series: Ward of Konoha [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: January prompt: Body Heat, M/M, Slow and Sweet, Smut Monday 2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:40:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou
Summary: Amazing how two such disparate men could find each other across the vast reaches of space and time.Madara wouldn’t give up even a second of this new life for all the power in the world.
Relationships: Maito Gai | Might Guy/Uchiha Madara
Series: Ward of Konoha [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1486409
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20
Collections: Naruto Smut Monday 2021





	Tapping Out

**Author's Note:**

> **Part of the Ward of Konoha AU** wherein Madara survived the Fourth Shinobi War, but was felled in his battle against Gai. After the war, he was brought back to Konoha as a ward of the village, much like Orochimaru. Gai, who had his damaged leg removed and replaced by one of Kankurō's prosthetic pieces, was assigned the task of being his warden and that's about the long and short of it. This is years later and they've moved into Kakashi's apartment because the Hokage has sweet digs. lol Enjoy! XD

It’s snowing again.

The world beyond glimmers with the light of apartment blocks, twinkling like stars through the gentle flurries.

Madara presses his face against the window and watches the scene below blur under the fog of his breath, entranced.

Children in the streets shriek as they gather by lantern light to rediscover the joy of the year’s first heavy snowfall. Tinkling laughter and snowballs dot the empty paths, sparing no one, not even innocent passerby. They’ll be at it for hours. Or at least until the chill seeps into their little bones and sends them navigating their retreat using the polestar glow of hearth and home.

Spilling down the sidewalks, they’ll dash into their apartments with flushed cheeks. Giant grins. Even the war orphans will return to find acceptance in the arms of guardians they may not have been born to, but have taken them in nonetheless.

Konohagakure. Such an unexpected gift.

Closing his eyes, he turns away from the window in the hall. These are more of the cherished moments he wishes had existed in his time, when his Sharingan was active and able to effortlessly immortalize the feeling. For now, he’ll just have to keep fighting to make sure they happen every day instead.

Freshly showered and dripping with the convenience of modern plumbing, he wonders when he grew so soft as to linger on the sweet things in life like this. He’s middle-aged now—or at least his reborn body is—and he feels settled in his skin for the first time since he can remember. No rage, no plotting, no pain. Self-actualization is a milestone he never expected to see realized, much less in his own person.

Two lifetimes lived and all it took was a stubborn man-child and a Beast to show him a better path than the trail of corpses his ego insisted was right.

He inhales long and slow as he tracks wet footprints down the hall and towards the living room. Once there, he hesitates, crossing his arms and allowing the side of his head to rest against the wall. In his first life, imagining a future was an effort in futility. Now, he would have to be blind not to see it stretched out before him, moonlit and beckoning.

The remnants of old wounds track across Gai’s broad shoulders and slip down his chest to create an effect not unlike kintsugi. Sunkissed skin inlaid with a web of silver scar tissue shines bright from where he reclines among a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. Everything about him speaks to strength.

Strength of body. Strength of character. Strength of commitment.

Maito Gai is an abnormality—a throwback to a bygone era, displaced in time—and a model of what they all should aspire to be. Of what Hashirama should have been. 

Madara leans more heavily against the wall under the weight of his regard.

“Ah, my friend,” Gai calls out with unabashed joy as soon as he hears the subtle shifting of the floorboards, “you lingered behind for so long. I thought the warm passions of our shower head had bested the appeal of my own!”

Gai. Stupid, brilliant fucking Gai.

Madara scoffs loudly and makes a point not to laugh, though it’s a very near thing. “The water ran out,” he lies, tone flat and hiding a smile in the shadow of his hair.

Gai laughs uproariously.

“Apologies! I suppose you will have to settle for thawing your winter heart in the summertime of my embrace instead.” Nodding to himself, he picks up a pillow and flings it across the room, missing Madara by a league. The overhead light goes out with a click and Madara realizes his Beast’s aim was as perfect as always, it’s just that the target wasn’t him.

Funny how it never is.

As soon as darkness descends, the subtle radiance of the world beyond sets the room aglow in a myriad of purples and blues. It’s a simple magic and wholly arresting.

Charmed by the ambiance and the company alike, Madara shoulders away from the wall and skirts the couch Gai had shoved aside to make room for two futons laid out side-by-side. They face the broad wall of windows living in the Hokage’s apartment has afforded them—a perfect place from which to soak in the warmth of belonging while winter blankets the rooftops of Konohagakure.

“I suppose if that’s the best you can offer…” he mutters, leaving the remainder of the sentiment to fizzle, fighting a grin all the while.

They’re alone, the war gongs in his head are silent, and Madara can imagine a no more pleasant evening than one spent in Maito Gai’s company.

He kneels next to the neat arrangement of bedding and slips in beneath the blanket Gai holds up for him. Their legs tangle like mokuton as they gravitate towards each other. A dozen little shifts and scoots sees them plastered front to front where Gai’s heartbeat is strong enough to move them both.

“Rest assured, I shall open the gates to stoke your youthful vigors to greater heights than any tap. I will not fail against this new romantic rival,” Gai teases, stroking the curve of Madara’s cheek and easing them into a kiss as light as feather fall.

It’s chaste. Sweet. Full lips and the lingering moisture of a shower run for two have Madara’s chest growing tight. They’re both competitive men by nature—powerful in all of the ways they connect—where even fucking either begins or ends in a spar more often than not. But tonight, Madara is eager to try out the gentler intimacies he knows Gai has craved all along.

Love isn’t always a curse. It’s about time he lets go of that particular fear.

Moving soft and slow, Madara angles his cheek to press into the roughness of Gai’s palm. “It’s a nice shower,” he murmurs into the press, “but I think the Gate of Opening gives you an unfair advantage.”

They share breathy laughter at a clever joke poorly delivered, hands stroking, kneading, and mapping a well-worn path. This close Madara can see how Gai’s laugh lines soften for him, how honesty washes away the goofy façade to reveal passion and unerring dedication. Masks aren’t necessary here when it’s just them and the ghosts of the past.

He brushes Gai’s damp hair away from his face to bear his brow.

Only one man has ever defeated him without resorting to deceit.  
Only one man has ever been able to bring him to his knees.   
And only one man has ever cared for him as a person as opposed to a means to an end.

Madara swallows heavily and steals another light, lingering kiss. “New rivalry aside, you promised me a sleepless night,” he points out, “it’s about time you make good on your word.”

The way his voice drops an impossible octave for affect has Gai flexing, bringing attention back to the intimate places where they touch, currently flaccid, but with boundless potential.

He sweeps their noses together in an Inuit kiss and peppers Madara’s brow with affection.

“Quite right, my love. A delay I must endeavor to correct.”

Carefully—as if Madara is something delicate in need of protecting—Gai rolls them over and settles between his bent legs. 

The position feels similar to a closed guard, with the sturdy weight of an opponent controlled by his thighs and at the mercy of his fists and his forearms. That’s where the analogy ends, though. Gai’s embrace is a gentle heat, a summer’s solstice that somehow manages to climb hotter than the fire that fueled Madara through two lives and three deaths. 

Frosted windows and cold floorboards don’t stand a chance against this man that burns like a conflagration.

It only takes another powerful glance for them to come together for more fond, unhurried kisses. There’s the whisper of shifting linens around them, the pop of a cap, and other familiar, wet sounds, but Madara barely notices them over the roaring in his ears. His pulse races as it never does in combat.

No one in the history of man has ever felt this level of transcendent joy.

Gai lies atop of him in a bid to give him everything—callused fingers leisurely plucking his nipples to hardness, an inspired tongue following to ease the ache. No swell of muscle is left undiscovered by his seemingly tireless hands and mouth. By the time he seems satisfied with how his wicked heat has coaxed Madara’s cock back to hardness, untouched, his own arousal stands turgid and tall, bowing under its own weight. 

On any other day, Madara would _devour_ him. For tonight, he succumbs to the softness. A nod is all it takes to invite Gai’s hand between his legs for more.

Madara exhales long and slow as those thick fingers penetrate him with similarly-paced care. His body is still lax—pliant from what felt like an hour of these same gentle ministrations when they bathed together just a short time ago. Even so, Gai keeps his wrist steady, his tempo measured. Never once does he heed the call of the brutish fucking Madara so often demands at this point. 

They’ve agreed that tonight isn’t about competition or claim. In Madara’s mind, it’s about relearning to love without reservation. It’s a test to see if he can finally get it right. 

Feeling off-balance, he grounds his fists in the sheets and his teeth in his bottom lip as Gai pulls out only to reach for the oil once more. The cap pops like the first pull of Tobirama’s Edo Tensei.

“Your body remembers the shape of my fingers,” Gai observes with the muted smile he reserves only for truly precious moments.

“My ass remembers the shape of your everything,” Madara grunts, inhaling shakily as Gai laughs then returns to stroke circles around his entrance. The anticipation has his stomach flipping, his chest burning with affection so strong he wants to crush something.

Still chuckling, Gai spreads the excess oil one-handed to massage the thick swell of Madara’s Adonis belt, stroking the sparse line of hair trailing down to his cock, and pulling away just shy of taking him in hand. All the while, he continues to work at stretching whatever ghost of resistance flutters against the knuckles of his other hand. Patient. Diligent. A persistence predator Madara has no defenses against.

In a vain attempt at self-control, Madara turns his attention from the sheen of Gai’s glossy hair and unerring smile to watch the snowfall. It’s not coming down in sheets—only a steady stream of flurries that by morning will have devoured everything in white. Virgin snow will bring beauty to an already prepared canvas. Sunlight will glint off of its surface, so bright it blinds, so bright the world as it was before pales in comparison.

Konoha...Madara, himself…

Tomorrow, they’ll be reborn together. Maybe then his pieces will be put back together with precious metals exactly the way Gai’s have been. The thought has him feeling lighter than he ever has. 

“Ah, the blooming of your joy is such a tender thing to watch,” Gai murmurs into the silence.

Madara startles. His eyes snap back to Gai’s face, those strong features bathed in purple and blue, flecked with gold. Joy? It seems wrong that a single word should be able to encompass the totality of a man’s heart.

“I am honored that you would allow me this opportunity to nurture the bud you once were and rejoice in your unfurling,” Gai continues as if each word isn’t a kunai designed specifically to shatter Madara’s defenses. 

_Fuck_. 

Madara stares, speechless for a time. As soon as he can regain his wits, he resolutely unclenches his stranglehold on the blankets in favor of reaching up and capturing Gai’s jaw. A soft, punched out noise escapes as he guides him down, curls up to join him halfway.

They meet in a kiss as unhurried as the storm outside.

Thick, rigid fingers continue to work him, stroking him from inside at a glacial pace. An intrepid thumb strokes his perineum and sets him to gasping just enough to offer up a deeper taste.

Gai tilts his chin just right to take the full measure of him.

The taste of curry lingers on his tongue as it likely will for the rest of their mortal lives. Every meal from hence forth could be flavored by Chinese five spice and Madara would still recall only the burn of chili oil. He arches into it. His hands stroke down Gai’s shoulders of their own accord, reveling in the thickness of his deltoids, his biceps, and the chest that holds a heart big enough to house them both. 

“Gai,” Madara rumbles helplessly. He can feel sweat joining the slickness between his legs. It’s intense and confusing how powerful a sensation can come from a touch so sweet. He doesn’t ever want it to stop.

They kiss under the moonlight for what feels like hours. The wet slide, hot breath puffing against his cheeks, Gai’s muscular arm slipping beneath his back to find the best angle for turning Madara’s limbs to tofu. The only way they could be closer would be to carve out a home beneath each other’s skin. 

After an eternity of shared touches, the stretch at his entrance disappears entirely, but still Gai continues to stroke and tease out a low-grade buzz of pleasure—never too much, but never enough either. It’s only with reluctance that they finally break away to breathe, foreheads coming to rest together as they pant. 

Long minutes pass. Then Madara is the first to break the silence.

“Uchiha love with everything we are,” he confesses into the quiet space between them where the world outside can’t reach. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.” As soon as the words are out, he surges up to reclaim Gai’s lips and mask the growing tightness in his throat.

But, for the first time in the past nine years, Gai sees fit to deny him.

He pushes up beyond Madara’s reach, then pauses, thick brows knitting together. “My passions burn no less brightly than your own, my love,” he pronounces in turn. The vibration of his voice rolls through them both like an approaching caravan. Conviction gleams in his eyes—sets them to glinting in the moonlight. “There can be no greater gift than learning the shape of your heart and offering my own in turn.”

The blankets shift as he reclaims his hand and reaches over to wipe the remnants of oil off on their still-damp towels.

Madara watches the stretch of a physique as well-honed as his own hover over him, pulse slamming with the resonation of Gai’s words. ‘ _No greater gift_ ’. It only takes a moment for Gai to settle back down, propping his elbows on either side of Madara’s head.

As soon as he’s in reach, Madara anchors himself on Gai’s biceps like shackles. His fingers claw dimples into his skin. “And what if I end up destroying you in the process?” he asks, eyes narrowing.

“You won’t.” 

Sage, he sounds so certain. Madara laughs—a broken thing. “Do you think I lack the skill?” 

Gai shifts more fully on top of him. His arousal is a thick, hot line pressed between their stomachs, lending strength to Madara’s own bowed erection.

“You won’t because at your core you are a man of compassion,” he pronounces.

The room narrows until all Madara can see is hope in the shape of a shinobi as broken as he is, but all the stronger for it.

“You, my friend, have risen from adversity and sought to amend your mistakes through effort and a willingness to direct your fiery passions towards more noble pursuits. You hold the Will of Fire in your breast and live life with a vivacity I very much admire. You will no sooner crack this bond between us than the Naka will reverse its flow.”

Nobel pursuits… If not for the fuinjutsu binding his true strength, Madara would have razed Konoha to the ground those first couple of years and they both know it. But throughout his confinement something has changed. For all that he respects Maito Gai, neither the Beast’s commitment nor his cock were ever going to be enough to dissuade a shinobi legend from his hundred-year grudge. That catalyst had to have come from within. 

As usual, Gai’s raw, simple insight is far deeper than one would expect. The ladder he offers towards redemption is stronger than any mokuton construct.

Madara clears his throat and releases Gai’s arms to instead grip his bare waist under the blankets and pull them completely flush.

“Stop talking.” Madara closes his eyes and turns his head away, unintentionally baring his neck. “Just shut-up and make love to me, Maito Gai.”

Warm lips sear a path from below his ear down to the prominence of his throat. The nomadic line of kisses pauses there, punctuated by a hint of teeth.

“It would be my honor,” Gai intones, a wealth of emotion thickening his voice and curtailing anything more.

They move as one, shifting in a dozen small ways to fit their bodies as close as possible. The oil spread across Madara’s stomach does wonders in the slip-slide of repositioning. Pressure brings their abdominals flush with their cocks trapped in the vice between.

Gai arches his hips back as if to take himself in hand, then eases forward and buries himself into the press instead. Slow. So slow. “Ah,” he grunts, jaw flexing with the force of his restraint.

Madara throws his head back and bares his teeth at the ceiling. The fire-bright drag of their cocks against each other is better than simple frotting should be. Coupled with the sloppy, wet, sucking sounds against his neck, he could probably come harder than he ever has given a quarter of an hour and another few rounds of Gai’s bestial noises. It’s torture of the best kind to be pressed into a bed and coveted like something precious.

No, not something, _someone_ precious.

An errant moonbeam alights on the long line of Gai’s back, beckoning and setting his hair aglow. Madara doesn’t dare deny the call. He buries his hands in those glossy strands to guide Gai’s mouth back up to his own. His thighs tremble with restraint as thin as ninja-wire, just barely resisting the impulse to wrap around Gai’s waist where his heels can dig into firm buttocks and urge them on. Harder. Faster.

As if sharing a mind, Gai kneads the nervous energy from one of his thighs until his legs fall open and pliant again. Even the friction of their stomachs leaves him.

As winter’s chill sweeps in to kiss away the heat built up between them, Gai arches his lower back to catch the light more fully. The blankets fall and gather around his knees and Madara can just barely make out the silhouette of his arousal swaying between his legs—long and heavy—before he takes himself in hand.

They took their time preparing each other with fingers and mouths in the shower. This right now is about reaffirming a deeper connection in the way of shinobi. Only trust would allow them front to front. And only love would allow them to go slow and linger without reserve.

Madara watches as Gai’s eyelashes flutter under the pleasure of a perfunctory stroke. Then he’s lowering back down and Madara can’t help but reach for his Sharingan. His left eye flickers—the bright red light more than a little damning. He’s giving away the fact that the chakra seal will have to be adjusted again, but he doesn’t care. There’s no room for secrets here.

He pushes at his dojutsu with all of his might until it blazes to life only long enough to take a single snapshot.

All the colors of battle combine to paint a new image, not of pain, but of purpose. Maito Gai. Smiling softly before a backdrop of snow—the angles of his face and the breadth of his shoulders cast in purple, blue, and red.

“Madara,” Gai sighs as if his name was a paper prayer.

Distracted by the sound, Madara doesn’t realize the intimacy of their position until a thick, spongy cockhead drags a circuit around his entrance, then nudges where he’s lax and loose to find a home in him. There’s absolutely no resistance. A steady pressure, a sudden give, and the slow, inexorable push of Gai’s cock feeding life back into him centimeter by centimeter.

Madara instinctively snaps his legs up and around Gai’s waist like he’s wanted to do this whole time. His fingers hook into claws before he can think to stop himself. Sage, he’s had a long litany of sexual partners, but never once has he felt so wholly consumed by a fire that wasn’t his own.

Gai licks into his open mouth and steals whatever broken sound has been building in his chest. By the time they’re joined as fully as the position will allow, Kaguya’s kingdom has risen to its apex in the night sky.

There’s no pain, no ache, only a satisfying fullness pulsing with the beat of Gai’s heart.

After a couple of selfish, but satisfying thrusts, they find a rhythm sedate enough to keep the pleasure from mounting too quickly. Shutting his eyes, Madara can forget that anything exists outside of the bounds of these futons. All that matters anymore is the push and pull of their tide and how it gradually erodes his reason.

In the end, honesty is the place he returns to, always.

“Thank you,” he groans, rocking under deliberate, measured thrusts, “for believing,” a gasp at Gai’s returning fullness, a hesitation for the vulnerability of what he’s about to say, “I’m—ah—worth redeeming.”

For the first time tonight, Gai falters. He slams his hips forward as if chasing a dream and Madara can’t help but arch under the sudden shift in dynamic. Their hips meet with a wet slap. His cock pulses, wet and sticky with precome between them.

Gai stutters—catches himself before he can lapse into anything more than the deliberate, tantric unfolding they’ve been working towards all evening.

“I will always—” he begins, stopping to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the way Madara purposefully bears down on him “—always house your flame in my heart.” Sweating despite the chill, he drops his head to rest on Madara’s shoulder. His desperation is evident even if his hips refuse to break stride. “And thank you as well,” he pants.

Madara holds him fast with arms, and legs, and the whole of his body. Oil slicks the path of a new angle that works his shaft against the divot between Gai’s abdominals—driving him closer to the pure lands than a true death has ever taken him. He moans, wrecked by the agony of restraint but too invested to give in to the siren call when he hasn’t heard what it is Gai is thankful for.

Not yet. Another minute. Two. As long as it takes to hear… 

“For showing me that sacrifice, while noble, is not the only way,” Gai finishes.

His words fall like blows. It’s too much.

Madara whines through his teeth at the unfairness of this moment not being able to stretch on forever. His toes curl as every muscle in his body pulls taut, group by group. It’s the slowest build-up he’s ever experienced before cresting. He mouths the air as his lungs burn for a breath that won’t come. Then, just like that, the bow string releases. Orgasm crashes down on him with such devastating power that all five nations likely hear his cry of completion.

He clings to Gai like a life-line as his Beast continues to take him apart to the rhythm of a metronomic beat. It’s everything he’s ever needed, this connection on a soul-deep level. Amazing how two such disparate men could find each other across the vast reaches of space and time.

Madara wouldn’t give up even a second of this new life for all the power in the world.

He shudders—sweat-slick, huffing like a bellows, and boneless

“Come for me,” he manages to choke out through the lassitude of completion. “Please, I need…”

Nodding, Gai does as bidden with an unreserved cry. His thrusts never speed up despite the obvious sob in his voice. The perfect pain. Every hitched breath is a shared breaking between them.

A shared remaking, too. 

The burden of ceramic armor will always weigh on Madara’s shoulders and the thickness of calluses on his palms will continue to lie in the shape of a gunbai handle. He more than anyone understands the weakness of his clan, how even good intentions can end up a twisted perversion in the end. However, if anyone can overwhelm the curse of hatred through sheer force of will, it’s this glorious beast of a man. 

They will persevere.

Together, they will redefine and uphold the tenets of love.

  
  



End file.
